Tom Mustill is a naturalist turned filmmaker and writer. His collaborations with Greta Thunberg and Sir David Attenborough have won dozens of international awards; been presented at the U.N. and at the 2021 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26); gone viral (70M+ views); and been shared by heads of state, the WHO, and Guns ‘N’ Roses. Having survived a humpback whale crashing into his kayak, Mustill turned to his experience as a naturalist and wildlife filmmaker to investigate human-whale interactions around the world. In the process, he met two tech entrepreneurs who wanted to use artificial intelligence – originally designed to translate human languages – to discover patterns in the conversations of animals and decode them. As he embarked on a journey into animal eavesdropping technologies, Mustill found that technologies developed to explore our languages are being focused on nature. From 17th-century Dutch inventors to the cutting edge work of Silicon Valley, How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication (Grand Central Publishing) examines the attempt at decoding animal communications. Whales, with their giant brains, strong voices, and long, highly social lives, offer one of the most realistic opportunities for this to happen. But what would the consequences of such human-animal interaction be?
May 3, 2025
Mustill, Tom
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Tom Mustill is a naturalist turned filmmaker and writer. His collaborations with Greta Thunberg and Sir David Attenborough have won dozens of international awards;